Date: 16/02/2011

LSI upgrades its processor chip for gateways, servers and base stations

LSI Corporation has announced the StarPro SP2704S, a higher-speed version of the StarPro SP2704 media processor for a wide range of applications from enterprise to carrier-class media gateways, servers and wireless base stations, and can scale to more than 3,000 simultaneous media gateway channels.

Based on the highly cycle-efficient StarCore SC3400e DSP core, the SP2700 family of media processors provides more than twice the processing capacity and consumes less power than competitive DSP architectures, says LSI. This device with embedded CPUs and integrated high-density memory allows high-density media processing, reducing the number of line cards and lowering power consumption.

"Wireless operators need powerful, highly scalable solutions to handle the exploding demand for broadband and real-time video services," said Will Strauss, principal analyst, Forward Concepts. "The StarPro SP2704S media processor enables networking and telecommunication OEMs to deploy high-capacity, media-rich, any-to-any wireless services across the network with minimum cost and risk."

"Mobile Internet video is driving a massive shift in end-user behavior that requires service providers to look at new ways to monetize the content flowing through their network," said Steve Vandris, media processor product line director, Networking Components Division, LSI. "Along with a robust set of software solutions, the SP2704S enables service providers to offer a wide range of next-generation applications and reduce their total cost of network ownership by achieving high-density, optimal cost and power efficiency."
LSI Corporation also expanded its Axxia communication processor family with the ACP3423 communication processor, targeted at equipment such as multi-radio base stations and wireless backhaul.

The ACP3423, built using the LSI asymmetric multicore architecture supports Synchronous Ethernet, which is critical for high-accuracy frequency synchronization for base-station and cell-site equipment deployed in all-IP/Ethernet networks. The ACP3423 also supports IEEE1588v2 timing-over-packet timing synchronization.

"With the proliferation of mobile broadband and the move to Ethernet and IP-based backhaul, system timing has become an essential ingredient for multiplexing, switching and transmission equipment," said Joseph Byrne, senior analyst for The Linley Group. "In addition, expanding the Axxia Communication Processor family enables customers to leverage common software architecture across multiple designs, lowering costs and speeding time to market."

The ACP3423 communication processor features two PowerPC 476FP processor cores running up to 1.6GHz and a wide array of intelligent offload engines, including industry-leading packet classification, traffic management, security processing and deep packet inspection. The asymmetric multicore architecture at the heart of the Axxia family allows for processing huge volumes of wireless traffic through the offload engines, enabling low-latency, fast-path processing with no load on the CPU complex. The on-chip processing elements are tied together using the LSI Virtual Pipeline technology, which delivers deterministic performance under varying traffic loads. The ACP3423 communication processor includes one XAUI and eight SGMII ports as well as PCIe and sRIO interfaces.